


enfin, l'arc, le limiteur

by mijra, verity



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consensual Kink, Flying Things, Gen, Light Bondage, Loss, Not that kind of knot, POV Multiple, Poetry, Rituals, Some Math References, Survival, Team, knots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mijra/pseuds/mijra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the fifth planet they've been on in the last three days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rodney

**Author's Note:**

> Story idea by mijra (Rodney, John, Ronon), prompt-that-started-it-all and collaborative editing by verity (Teyla).
> 
> The title ("indeed, the arc, the limiter [of this puzzling circle]") is taken from a 19th century French mnemonic poem for the first many digits of pi (in this case: 51328).

"I do not think it is necessary for you to be afraid," Teyla says, "but if that is what you want, I hope I will not disappoint you," and Rodney has this upside-down glimpse of her when he tips his head back. She looks hot, not hot like appealing-hot, though she's totally that, too, but hot like she's sweating, obviously, and then the lights go out.

The lights are not supposed to go out. Rodney's checked the wiring at least fourteen times and he's been working on getting the place set up with real electrical lighting for approximately the past six hours and forty-seven minutes. The lack of light bulbs was admittedly an issue at first, but they have enough scrap to build a reactor, which Rodney categorically refuses to do in the dark. When Rodney makes something work, it works, it doesn't crap out on him when he really needs it. It might be a pretty patchy solution, sometimes, and this wouldn't be the first time he nearly got them killed, but that's generally because of stupid people, not the quality of Rodney's repairs. Maybe if he blinks, right, no, and now Rodney's panicking, and Rodney never panics. Okay, so maybe sometimes, like when Sheppard said Atlantis was fading, but that was different because Sheppard sounded pretty panicked, too, or when Rodney's hands keep shaking and he says he can't and Teyla says she will help him with this, please, or when Ronon shot that--that thing--and some of it got on Rodney, or that one time last month before all of the above had happened. Rodney was in the middle of a very delicate operation, thank you, which should have been done with precise and very specific equipment but actually involved a mini-screwdriver and chewing gum he had found in Sheppard's mouth and several moments of really not being sure if it was going to work and quite a lot of knowing he couldn't concentrate because, hello, what part of imminent nonexistence did they not understand? He can't think when he panics, of course he can think--he just can't _think_. Usually Ronon shoots something for him, and Sheppard makes that grim condescending face again and drags him--Rodney him, not Ronon, because that would be weird--out of danger while he can't stop himself from flailing or saying things he really doesn't mean until Teyla tells him very politely but very emphatically to shut up.

The first knot catches the hair on his wrist. The darkness swallows him and he can't tell what's coming. Rodney can actually hear himself babbling but can't seem to stop the noise of _a function f: X → Y between two topological spaces (X, T X) and (Y, TY) must be a bijection and continuous, and its inverse must also be continuous..._, yes, yes, good job, McKay, that is still the definition of homeomorphism, and this is really not a good time. There are hands on his arms, not gentle, dragging them together. He's not delicate, exactly, he wouldn't say that, but he bruises, and then the bruises hurt all the time and oh my God did that fingernail just break his skin? He hopes not, because this place is unhygienic; there could be spores.

Teyla's next set of hitches keep him from flailing, but what if it's not Teyla, okay, no, so that's not even logical. She--him, it, whatever--holds him down the way Teyla pinned Ronon yesterday when he went into convulsions, efficiently and quietly, as though Ronon had been cooperating, and maybe he was, Rodney doesn't know. Teyla's heavy, all muscle, and the floor is hard against his back but Rodney's still struggling so much he's out of breath and can feel his own heartbeat everywhere, throat, ears, toes, arrhythmic. That's not good, even Rodney knows that's not good and, doctorates aside, he's not a medical doctor, he prefers science, where you generally deduce things based on calculations and actual evidence. Rodney's not stupid, despite the apparent fallacy in the theory that if he fights back, he might get himself free. If he's counting each little tug as a knot, there have got to be at least three meters of rope around his wrists and forearms already. He's currently being trussed up, hands in front of him, elbows together, and the rope isn't the soft nylon kind. It's the rough, braided Athosian rope that Teyla always packs. He tries rotating his wrists again because the abrasion feels so bad it's almost good. It would feel better if he could actually see something. Teyla, Rodney thinks. He hopes he's not actually saying that aloud: Teyla Teyla Teyla please Teyla.

She's talking to him, but he's past that. All he can think of is set theory, sequences of prime knots, patterns he should have seen sooner. He's sweating, too, his shirt sticking at the small of his back, soaked through under his shoulders where he's pressed against the floor. He knows it's Teyla, because the cadence of her voice has always been a little unnatural. Aliens aside, who talks like that? Rodney couldn't even reproduce that in his head. He could probably write an algorithm. He's so happy algorithms still exist, even if Earth might not and Atlantis isn't and so many bad things have happened to him in the dark and he doesn't know any more whether this is the sort of experience he's going to classify later as good (anything with maple syrup including beer, having made people cry at both of his own dissertation defenses, the first time he had one of those cake things they make on that jungle planet, okay and all the times he had one of those cake things after the first time, too, Sheppard's ridiculous laugh especially when he's trying not to find something inappropriate as hilarious as Rodney does, every single time Rodney steps through a gate, that one time when Ronon, who like pretty much everyone else doesn't have the intelligence to understand half the importance of anything Rodney does, looked at him with awe) or bad (Rodney really isn't thinking about anything that happened in the last, oh, say, two hundred hours, except, no, he is, and it won't stop it won't stop won't stop).

He hears Teyla shift before she flips him onto his side and hauls him forward by the end of the rope. It hurts like fire because it arcs his back and bodies don't actually do that or at least his doesn't. He can't move his hands except to stretch his fingers but the sweat and the scratches are making his wrists itch and burn and she better not damage him. Rodney needs his hands to do his job or they all die because he is not exactly replaceable. Everything hurts and he can't see anything and he seriously did not sign up for this, just the NDA eons ago, really, and he didn't even read that, either, it was just like, alien technology doesn't exist you morons but, absolutely, how soon can I start? He wants it to stop and he wants it to go on forever and he hates the dark and there's her voice, unperturbed, beautiful, running in the background like a soundtrack to everything.

Teyla needs to hurry up. Rodney really has to stop thinking, right now, just for about three or four seconds. The twists of pain flare bright and pull him back from darkness, from the edge where he can't get enough air. The world is actually ending, and they're in a bunker on an unfamiliar planet and if he could have only seen that little line of code earlier--ten hours would have been good but ten minutes, even ten seconds would have worked fine; Rodney can do a lot with ten seconds--and that's what comes from "delegating" to other "scientists" on the "team" instead of doing everything himself, only now he can't because he can't move his hands, though he's still trying. His wrists hurt from trying. His arms hurt, his shoulders hurt, his fingers hurt from trying and nothing's helping. He's breathing too much and there's no air in the hot room and Rodney knows he really needs to stop thinking or he won't be able to, and he's begging now, or rather he would be if he had any control over what is coming out of his mouth. He's reworking the probability over again, out loud, he has to, because what if he forgot something and what if Sheppard and Ronon can't find it and don't come back and what if there's something wrong with the wiring and that's why it's so hot, oh God, maybe they're going to die incinerated after all. Teyla pinches him, twists, and the pain is like an electrical shock, jarring everything. He'll have to start over because he can't remember where he was. He wants it again, now, wants an endless chain of links and shocks until it overwrites his entire brain.

The lights come back on without so much as a flicker. He sees a dark Sheppard-shaped thing with his hand on the something that looks like the light switch, which actually makes sense, yeah, Rodney remembers adding a switch to the circuit. He doesn't see anything else because Teyla jerks his head back as far as it will go. She's got him by the hair at the back of his head where it's not as thin. That ought to hurt, but Rodney only registers it as the reason he's stopped trying to explain how to calculate their odds. Teyla's talking to Sheppard now, and he's answering her. Neither of them sounds like they're mourning Ronon or dying themselves, so that's a start. Rodney will take that, it's good.

Teyla tugs, hard; it pulls at Rodney's exposed throat, stretching tight down from his chin to his chest. The whole arc of Rodney's body strains with tension and gratefulness as he finally tips backwards into the white wild knots that cloud his vision. The last thing he thinks is that, oh God, he loves her, best ever, just before his brain makes the stuttering jump which is always a thing of wonder, into quiet and infinity.


	2. John

Ronon steadies himself as soon as his feet touch the flat landing, shaking his head as if to clear it. He glances back up at the hard white daylight at the end of the inclined shaft that links the bunker to the surface. John doesn't ask if he's okay; that just gets him a grunt or a nod. He bends and tugs the bungee cords free from the makeshift nets that they lashed together out of whatever they could find topside--mesh, heavy plastic, bits of wire. One has torn. Coils of wire, sheets of heat-resistant plating, and various bits of piping are scattered across the last several feet of shaft floor. Ronon tucks his shoulder up to lodge their flashlight under his ear and starts tossing the pieces back in.

Everything John's seen of this planet looks like a galactic landfill. They'd done a bit of exploring before they found the bunker. There are no landmarks. McKay sent them out with a datapad that he had jabbed at, issuing warnings, instructions, and threats until John had finally just snatched the thing and said he got it, see ya later. The thing had been useless anyway. The glint from the sun made the screen hard to read and John burnt himself twice on the metal casing. The surface is a furnace, like a cockpit in the desert where you wear whatever you can find under your helmet to keep the sweat out of your eyes. You fly into infernos because that's where your men are down, burnt, or blown out of the sky. The heat doesn't bother John so much; you learn to deal with it. The problem is that John's lost count of how many hours he's been awake. He's groggy, as if he's wading through the surf; his vision has gone off from the glare of the suns. John slings his pack off more carelessly than he means to and adjusts his sweaty shirt. Ronon is carrying the more delicate parts they've collected, the ones that look closest to the crude diagrams Rodney drew them, even though Ronon's the one running a fever.

"Almost done. I'll finish," Ronon tells him, bumping John's shoulder with his fist.

Somewhere deeper in the bunker, he can hear McKay jabbering on in the bossy-whiny voice he uses when he's pressured and upset. Normally John would stay to make sure Ronon's good to go, but John has to take care of McKay, even if he's running on fumes. Deciding not to deal with McKay when he sounds like this is the equivalent of agreeing to fly backup with an AH-64 when you know she's only got three out of four rotors up there. John doesn't need to go into why that won't end well.

John knows Teyla's more than capable of dealing with McKay under normal circumstances, and normal includes some pretty weird shit, but sometimes McKay's more of a two-person job. Okay, he bargains with himself, he'll check on McKay, do what he can, and then he'll crash.

The dim light from the shaft doesn't extend past the first corner. John grits his teeth against another yawn and feels for the open doorway, fumbling for the light switch, muscle memory from every place he lived or worked before Atlantis. He finds it and flicks it on even as he realizes there shouldn't be a switch.

A light comes on, though. McKay's on his side on the floor, arms bound neatly together in front of him, his eyes wide open and staring at John. It sounds like he’s trying to explain the cumulative distribution function to Teyla, who looks more concerned than comprehending. When she pulls McKay's head back, forcing his eyes away from John, McKay goes silent.

"Rodney has found a way to light the bunker." Teyla glances up at John and flicks her gaze to the light source standing against the wall by where they've piled their gear. John wouldn't call it a lamp, really, but it's glowy and sort of cool-looking. Teyla's pack is set apart, the contents spilling out. "I am glad to see you and Ronon have returned successfully."

"Oh, yeah. Ronon." He gestures behind him in the general direction where Ronon might have gone with their haul. McKay is lying quietly on the concrete floor, sweating like a pig and breathing hard. "He doesn't look so good. Uh," John says to Teyla. It’s like the Udhorun initiation rite he’d tried to overrule all over again. "Is he, uh?"

Teyla focus is back on McKay, but her voice is light. "I am nearly finished. He will be fine, John."

McKay goes limp. Teyla turns him gently onto his back and gets to work unpicking the knots on the rope. John's afraid to interrupt. Her hands are sure and confident, quick on the knots, but the rest of her is shaking.

"Hey," John says, because he's going to laugh nervously if he doesn't say something. He can't laugh; it's probably not funny. "This is kind of kinky."

"It is what he needs," Teyla says firmly. Whatever it is, it shut McKay up. He looks almost peaceful. Holland had looked peaceful, too, in the end, and that shook John up for months. He holds out his field knife when he sees the ropeburn on McKay's arms as Teyla unwinds the rope, but she shakes her head. She's probably right: Athosian rope is good stuff.

"Want me to sit with him?" he offers. John hopes she'll refuse but he could use a clue as to which of them he needs to attend to first. If he sits down at this point, he's going to end up asleep. He's just kind of planing, got enough left for a landing. It's going to have to count.

Teyla relaxes minutely, the way she did under fire on P4M-937 when John had put a hand on the console of the alien shuttle, felt her wake and call to him, and announced, _ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking_. Teyla's straighter shoulders make John giddy with relief.

"Thank you, John," she says, still unthreading the last of the rope from around McKay's wrists as though she does this every day. "That will not be necessary."

"Colonel," McKay mumbles, still sprawled as loose as a puddle. "I'm good now."

John can't help it this time. He snorts when McKay sighs happily, flopping into what is presumably a more comfortable position. Check, check, check: is aware of self and surroundings, recognizes teammates, can articulate status, does not complain of debilitating pain, though John is sure they'll hear about McKay's back later. "Yeah, buddy, you are."

McKay beams up at him. John's too tired for this. No one's bleeding, crises averted; John can sort the rest out later.

While McKay moans enthusiastically over a water bottle and slurs his way through a question about a powerbar, John paws through their gear until he finds the rolled-up ground pads. He unearths McKay's sleeping bag and tosses it to Teyla. His hands are stiff on the stuffsack's drawstring as he goes for own sleeping bag. The laces of his boots defeat him. It's cool, he can sleep with his shoes on.

"Check on Ronon?" he asks Teyla, though he knows she will.

John stretches out, tucks his hands under his head and lets his eyes close. It feels like falling, the kind that isn't good, the kind that makes you start looking for the eject sequence and turn to make sure your co-pilot's still breathing. He can't relax enough to sleep, so he opens his eyes. Someone's taken his boots off. Ronon and Teyla are talking quietly over an Satedan game set up on the floor between them with bits of scrap as pieces; Ronon's got one hand resting on a P-90. McKay's electricity is making a barely-audible clicking noise, reassuring and steady, like heartbeat or a propeller. McKay himself is snuffling in his sleep. No one is dead, so John shuts his eyes again, clear for take-off.


	3. Teyla

Rodney is standing next to the light source tapping impatiently at the control panel. It's not Ancient and Teyla doesn't recognize the characters that run down the side, but they seem to mean something to Rodney. He's muttering under his breath; to her ears it's all empty patter. She resists the impulse to check the time. John will bring Ronon back, with or without the materials Rodney needs for repairs, or they won't come back at all.

This is the fifth planet they've been on in the last three days. On the first day, Ronon recited all of the potentials he could think of and Teyla vetoed any gate address that sounded familiar. Rodney has a copy of the team’s mission reports, but they've lost almost everything that was in the databases on Atlantis. None of them read Ancient well. Teyla can recognize some words: caution, gate, open, off. That's enough.

By the door, Rodney's checking the wiring again. The light source flickers for a moment before it comes back on, bright enough that Teyla has to shield her eyes for a moment. Rodney doesn't seem to notice. He's been at this for hours now, since Ronon found the power source this morning, something that looks like a ZPM but isn't one. It will last a while; long enough for them to rest here while Rodney repairs the damage to the jumper caused by the Wraith device that had been implanted on it.

John and Ronon went to the surface with a crude map on Rodney's spare datapad and a list of the parts he needs. They should be back by now. The planet seems deserted; there's no reason to react yet. Teyla sits on the floor, legs folded, runs through her usual meditation exercises while the light flashes and recedes at her side in white waves. All of the rites of Athos are movements between those twin poles; Teyla remembers the way the rising sun shocked her when her father untied the blindfold over her eyes, touching her face while she blinked and tried to remember how to see. The light source stutters again.

If John and Ronon don't come back, they still might be able to repair the jumper. If they lose the jumper, they'll have to make the walk back to the gate at night, that thin sliver of time when neither sun is above the horizon. Most of their supplies are in the bunker. It will be unpleasant if they have to improvise a toilet, but there's enough here to hold all four of them for three days, Teyla and Rodney alone for a week.

"I can do this," Rodney says, like he needs his own expert reassurance. He's holding up a part in his hand, squinting at it. It's small, square, metal; it means nothing to Teyla. "We're not going to die, we're not going to—I can do it, I just, I can't do in the _dark_. And I need—aren't they supposed to be back now? We don't have _time_ —"

They have plenty of time, of course. It's everything else that they're short of.

—

They came in hot from M9X-R81 six days ago. By then, it was all over, the city emptied, the gate sabotaged, the ZPM gone. Teyla doesn't dwell on Atlantis's proud towers lost under the water, much like she doesn't think about the forests of Athos, or anything else that is lost to them. It won't help now. There are proper ways to do these things, to mourn, and when there is time, Teyla will do them.

She takes the sturdy rope that Halling's brother makes out of the bottom of her pack, tests it against the flat of her palm. It's coarser than anything she’s used for this before, but she doesn't have other options. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand. Her eyes are watering. The last time she slept was almost two days ago, leaning against Ronon in the back of the jumper on the planet with all the beetles.

Behind her, Rodney is swearing, muttering about conductivity and Zelenka and for a moment, the world shifts back to normal. Teyla tightens her hand around the rope until the fibers bite into her skin. "Rodney," she says, turning. "You should rest."

Rodney tosses a wrench onto the ground next to him. "I can rest when I die."

"Let me help," Teyla says. She walks over to him, drops the coil of the rope next to the discarded wrench. His head is bent low, his hands stilled; she can't see his face.

"Working now, talk later," Rodney says. "Wait—can later be now?"

—

New Athos isn't an option when they don't know if they're being traced, followed. Teyla doesn't know how they can be sure they're not, how Rodney could know. There are so many things they don't know—who sabotaged the gate so it couldn't dial out, whether or not anyone else made it out of the city. Two jumpers were missing, but that could mean anything. If Teyla thinks about it, she gets frustrated, angry. She can cope with loss; what she can't accept is hope.

She breaks up the time into hours, minutes, the tasks into their component parts. Rodney must fix the jumper, which he had to gut to root out the tracking device after they crashed on the last planet, so John and Ronon must find him parts. Rodney must fix the jumper, and for that he needs electricity, light, whatever he can get from from this wasteland where the sun sears her eyes and wears at her skin. It's hot even below the surface, there's the heat from above as well as what spills from the light source Rodney has salvaged. Teyla wipes the sweat from her eyes; it pools between her breasts, beneath her shoulder blades, at the small of her back.

Rodney is looking up at her now, waiting. Sometimes it's hard to gauge his interest, what he wants from her when they do this. The first time, on Udhorun, she'd offered, but since then, Rodney's always asked. For her, it's simple, rehearsing the rite she and every child of Athos went through to transition to adulthood, bound and sightless in the dark. Rodney needs to pass through that place time and time again, though, as if there's some lesson he can't learn, something that refuses to stick. It endears him to her. Teyla kneels next to him to pick up the rope and put her hand on his shoulder, pushing gently until he yields and lies down on the floor.

"I'm scared," Rodney says. He tips back his head to look at her.

"I do not think it is necessary for you to be afraid," she says, pretending to misunderstand him, "but if that is what you want, I hope I will not disappoint you."

Teyla's close enough to the switch for the light source to reach it easily. The rope is in her other hand. One task at a time: the first, a touch, plunging them into darkness.


	4. Ronon

_Bright Sateda:_  
          --His footsteps--  
 _star among stars!_  
          --crush through debris--  
 _From green wood_  
          --that shifts--  
 _to golden plain_  
          --loose rubble like gravel--  
 _Her gleaming cities rise above the hills._  
          --not good ground--  
 _Her strength is the song of her people,  
The unequaled bounty of her table_

"You know what this place needs?" His recitation is interrupted by John’s complaint. The light from the double suns is stark: two shadows, two points of blindness. The sky is white. "A bar. With A/C, yeah, and happy hour."

His vision is warped by the glare off the metallic parts scattered throughout the detritus. John’s form smudges into the harsh brightness around him. The jumper disappears beneath a curtain of heat before they're out of range of sight. He keeps his eyes open, scanning for movement. They are exposed. Bad ground for running, barren, uneven. A glint of circuitry. He stoops to snag it without stopping. The shape isn't right.

John is veering slightly left. He doesn't think John knows it. He doesn't correct the trajectory, just stores the information. He has to concentrate to recall the details from the diagrams. This piece he's holding: the central configuration is intact, but inexact. It's close enough. He pockets it.

_Again will your daughters sing with the rising sun;_  
 _The first words they learn will be your names._  
 _Your language will sound on every frequency,_  
 _Pegasus will be rich with your voices._  
 _Even before your children are old enough to speak,_  
 _You will not be the rustle of a silent channel;_

The catalogue of ambient noises is finite: hiss of steam and occasional whistle of wind, air pockets bursting as material melts in the heat. John's voice, their strides, their breath, the clatter of junk tumbling under their feet, the scrape of the net John drags, the runner's voice deep in his chest, the whisper of,

_after the culling, the city is muted_  
 _for what is there to say to the dead_  
 _sleeping beside their own mourners_  
 _what comfort can be given_  
 _to those who have been overlooked_

He’s slept, but John drags his feet. While John's been awake, he's lost whole days while worn down by whatever they injected him with eight or nine days ago, swimming up to consciousness once with Teyla slumped against his shoulder in the jumper. Another time, he woke brokenly to _family fractures in your womb, Melena,_ and sank straight back into the vertigo.

If they’re being tracked, the net and what's left of his nausea will curb their range and their speed. Neither matters; he’s run with worse than nausea and the net isn’t worth the trouble. He thinks about leaving John behind, too; he’s faster on his own. He won't, though. The runner sends a frisson of anxiety curling through him. He might. He craves the certainty of being hunted, of knowing which instincts are valid. If the Wraith are out there, it would be better if he went alone. Go, says the runner, the hunter. Go now.

He drifts to the left, into John's peripheral vision and into the broader of John's two shadows. His presence redresses John's bearing.

"You okay there?" John asks, then, "Ow! Man, I think I just burnt myself on this thing. You want to carry it for--" He tunes him out, scanning for irregularities. The horizon shimmers. A mirage floods the edges of the visible plane.

_from the whitened hive. The way is unwarded,_  
 _turnpikes wide open on the empty roads._

_We burn the dead who do not bleed; our unburied_  
 _heroes have crumbled to ashes unhailed._  
 _They do not rot, wraithbringer. Our crop is reaped_  
 _before the harvest, our hardy men husked dry,_  
 _our women fall woundless: all unworthy ends._

He's been here before, roiling from the loss of home and the press of a feeder below his sternum. He doesn’t remember this planet, but it feels the same. The world is uninhabited, a blistering junkyard satellite with ring coordinates.

He’s wary of the stillness, aware of John’s exhaustion and the way the heat compresses his own lightheadedness into a single white point behind his eyes. Not thinking about Atlantis makes the headache worse, makes the illusion of a reflected ocean harder to ignore.

_They say you could have seen the host of ships_  
 _That moor against the arched Lantean piers;_  
 _They say one watched processions from the bridge,_  
 _With flowers flung from balcony and beam._  
 _For tidal festivals they hung the walls_  
 _With lavish coral garlands from the deep._  
 _They crowned with laurels in exalted halls_  
 _Architects and authors of their victories._  
 _Millennia have passed,_

He ought to recognize defeat. He’s a soldier. He knows the inaccuracies the temperature produces in life signs devices. They’ll never find him. If you want to live, says the runner, slink into the heat and disappear. Shorten your steps.

"I'll take point," he says to John. "What? You gonna fight me for it?"

With John at his back he can turn his focus forward. The heel of his palm brushes the butt of his gun, set to stun. The runner is uneasy, chafing under his skin as the sweaty straps of his armor rub over it. They circle around slowly, aiming to return the jumper. From there they still have a long walk back to the bunker.

John drops to dig a piece of scrap out. The boxy end is attached to a cable which pulls up from under a top layer of litter, then relays from some deeper source, before refusing to give. John tugs, wipes the sweat off his face with the back of a wristband, and tosses him a knife. It takes several dozen strokes to cut through the fiber. The cable flexes and distorts with each cut, writhing.

Nothing else moves.

The jumper reemerges, twisted wing first, from the heat haze.

_Recall the cutting that final summer of the kitav trees_  
 _On Sateda before the terror, with barb-toothed saws._  
 _The wood wept. The tasteless sap was worthless._  
 _The men were struck dumb. They stood sticky-fingered_  
 _Without a groan, and gained nothing while it gummed._  
 _This is twin to that threshing: the thimble tops_  
 _Of the tallest towers sink between the tides._

_Those deep-drowned lights were my doumma wine,_  
 _Sweet-lipped and loose-tongued, a lover's drink._  
 _I come home to quiet, like the last kitav cutting:_  
 _I find no friends to toast with, filled cups untouched,_  
 _Trays of broken bread sit on abandoned tables._  
 _The guilt will gut us, slowly, unable to forget_  
 _The way the water swallowed the shuddering wake._

He crouches in the narrow zone of double shadow beside the jumper where Rodney has torn away swathes of panels and has shredded wide splices of the insides of the jumper wall. Insulation shifts around his knee, floating with the draft of wind. The wind only blows in one direction; the field of scattered insulation spreads downwind, just far enough to blur into the first of the mirages, not quite far enough to reach the gate.

He drinks only enough to swallow twice. John watches him lazily, lifting the unclipped sight of his gun to his eye and squinting. He can see John blink, the sharp motion drawing his attention, then the gray-green iris behind the polarized lens. The gun lies across John’s lap; the safety's on and the magazine's in John's pocket. John tips his head back against the jumper.

_Only a hunger, huge and wrathful, eats at my bones,_  
 _Gnaws through numbness, bends its wet nose to ground._  
 _The scent of blood blooms through the blighted loam,_  
 _Heavy and animate against the hunter's tongue._

He examines what they've scavenged, tossing parts away. The crude sketches on the datapad would have been more helpful in a shop or a supply room. The planet is generous, but it’s all still cast-offs: broken couplings and bent washers, cups and clips distorted by the heat. The quiet’s barely broken by the muted tap of the back of John’s head against the jumper’s side. If Rodney has to come up and pick through the surface himself, Ronon’s not coming with him.

“You done?” says John. John stretches a leg to toe a discarded piece of flexible tubing. “What the heck’s this thing, you think?”

“No idea,” he shrugs.

Go, the runner insists. Hide. Hunt. Go. The voice burns through him like the double suns.

_For five years your house echoed with your name_  
 _in your daughters’ morning prayers._  
 _Why then do I still look for you, my brother, my comrade,_  
 _among rare vines in temple gardens?_  
 _When we buried you, we placed yaphetta rusk over your lips_  
 _and five seeds on your tongue._  
 _There is no whisper of you left in the whole of the world_  
 _but these few white flowers._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excerpts quoted, in order:
> 
>   * Anon (traditional). Satedan collection. “Bright Sateda”
>   * Dex, Ronon. “Untitled LIV”
>   * Anon (traditional), Satedan collection. “Lament”
>   * Dex, Ronon. “Melena”
>   * Dex, Ronon. “Sateda”
>   * Holsinius, Geem. Translated. “Lantean Sonnet III”
>   * Dex, Ronon. “Atlantis”
>   * Dex, Ronon. “Runner”
>   * Anon (traditional). Satedan collection. “Verses for mourning”
> 



End file.
